A Good Debutante’s Guide to Ruin by Sophie Jordan
Chapter 3
The chamber was cavernous. The bed swallowed her. She felt like a child at its center, engulfed in the fine linen sheets, her head lost deep in the plump pillows that smelled faintly of lavender.
It was nothing like the room she shared with Rachel back at Harwich’s, and despite its opulence, she longed for that room right now. She longed for her friend. For the familiar. For smiles and eyes that did not stare coldly down at her.
He hated her.
She could see that at once. Perhaps this was just what he had become. Arrogant and pompous. A haughty nobleman immersed in his sparkling world of privilege. She was simply an unwanted relation to be tolerated.
He was a duke now. Not a boy to abide her with grudging affection and fetch her down from trees. Something inside her chest softened at that memory. He had more than tolerated her back then. He had answered her questions, endured her following him all about the countryside with good humor. Where had that boy gone?
She laced her fingers across her stomach and stared into the dark of the canopy above her as if she could see something there. Some truth, some bit of strength she so desperately needed right now. It did not matter how he felt about her. He would do his duty. He would shelter her until he located her mother, and then . . .
Well, she wasn’t certain what came next. With her mother, one could never be certain. That much she had learned. One thing she did know, however, was that she could not count upon her. She would have to forge her own future. Rosalie rolled onto her side and tucked her hands beneath her cheek as the image of Declan filled her mind.
He had changed. At age fifteen he had been a mere shadow of the man he was now. He was more fleshed out now. Muscular, his chest and shoulders broad, filling out his jacket to an impressive degree. She’d seen very few gentlemen in Yorkshire. Just local villagers and neighboring farmers. If she wasn’t careful, she would let the old infatuation return. And nothing good could come of that.
Declan would not—
She stopped the thought, crushing it with a wince. She must cease to think of him thusly. She was practical. He was a duke. She was a nobody. Daughter of a barrister and a woman he had never accepted as his father’s wife. She should simply consider herself fortunate he had agreed to let her stay on . . . and begin planning for the future.
She blinked in the darkness and closed her eyes only to a deeper dark, wondering why that thought did not provide her with any real comfort. It was well and good to decide she needed a plan, but until she had that plan, she doubted she would sleep well.
With a sigh, she opened her eyes again and stared sightlessly ahead for long hours into the night, her mind churning. Only as dawn tinged the sky, peeking through the partially opened drapes, did she succumb to sleep.
